Donne, John

(1573-1631)

   Born in London of Roman Catholic parents, his father, a prosperous merchant, died when Donne was four, and his mother remarried. He was educated at Hart Hall (now Hertford College), Oxford, but because he would not swear allegiance to the Protestant Queen Elizabeth, he was barred from taking a degree. Although trained in law, he never practiced, and from 1597 to 1602 he was secretary to Sir Thomas Egerton. Around 1601 he fell into disgrace by secretly marrying Anne More, Lady Egerton's niece, for which he was imprisoned, lost his job, and lived the next ten years in poverty. He embraced Protestantism and took holy orders and was ordained in 1615, became dean of St. Paul's in 1621, and was reckoned to be foremost preacher in the England of his day. He was a widower for fourteen years before he died of stomach cancer. He was the author of many religious works as well as being a voluminous poet. Some of his poems: "A Litany," "Community," "Elegies," "Holy Sonnets," "The Broken Heart," "The Dissolution," "The Flea," "To Mr. George Herbert," "Woman's Constancy."

   Sources: Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. English Poetry: Author Search. Chadwyck-Healey Ltd., 1995 (http://www.lib.utexas.edu:8080/search/epoetry/author.html). Stanford University libraries and Academic Information Resources (http://library.stanford.edu). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete English Poems of John Donne. A.J. Smith, ed. Penguin Books, 1971. The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Oxford Companion to English Literature. 6th edition. Margaret Drabble, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.